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MovieMail's Review
One of the most critically revered of all of Mizoguchi's films, Sanshô Dayû is paired with the lesser-known, but equally exquisite Gion Bayashi. It's superlative cinema, says Roger Brown.
It is ironic that when Kurosawa, Ozu and even Naruse have been rediscovered, the man whom they revered as their master has still to receive his due. Perhaps these issues of Sansho Dayu and Gion Bayashi will help.
Kenji Mizoguchi was born in Tokyo in 1898. His early ambition was to be a painter, and indeed his films are very pictorial. He became an actor. He made his first film in 1922. He eventually directed over 80. He died in 1956.
If there is one overriding theme in his work, it is that of a woman sacrificing herself for an (often) unworthy man, in the context usually of a corrupt society. Sansho Dayu tells the story of the decline of a noble family after its head refuses to act in an inhumane way as a Governor. The wife becomes a courtesan, the two children are sold into serfdom. Eventually the family are partially reunited, after further sacrifices.
Gion Bayashi is set in modern times. A young orphan is keen to be trained as a geisha. Although her friend has reservations, money is found and all appears to be well. However there are strings attached and a compromise has to be reached, with the older woman here making the accommodation.
What a short review of this kind cannot convey is the extraordinary richness of these films. Each lasts half the length of the average Hollywood blockbuster but covers a vastly greater range of experiences. Indeed an American critic is said to have called Mizoguchi the Shakespeare of the cinema, and for once the comparison is not absurd. Although the underlying themes are tragic enough, there is also humour, courage and dignity as well as cruelty, hypocrisy and suffering. Like the greatest art these films have a sublime self-sufficiency.
Above all, these films show the ability of cinema to tell a story. As David Thomson says in his Biographical Dictionary of Film, ‘Mizoguchi has no superior at the unfolding of narrative by way of camera movement.’ Sansho Dayu and Gion Bayashui are ‘must sees’ for any serious lover of the cinema.
Illustrated booklet featuring rare archival imagery and a full reprint of the 1915 Mori Ogai story adapted in Sansho Dayu.
Film Description
Famed for its period reconstructions and powerful imagery, often through the director's trademark long takes, Sansho Dayu is one of the most critically revered of all of Mizoguchi's films, and a classic of world cinema, often cropping up in lists of the greatest films ever made. It is a landmark film of exquisite tone and purity of emotion. The lesser known Mizoguchi feature film Gion Bayashi, produced the year before Sansho Dayu, is presented here on DVD in the UK for the very first time.
Based on an ancient legend, as recounted by celebrated author Mori Ogai (in his short story of the same name, written in 1915), and adapted by Japanese director Mizoguchi Kenji, Sansho Dayu is both distinctively Japanese and as deeply affecting as a Greek tragedy. Described in its opening title as "one of the oldest and most tragic in Japan's history", Mizoguchi depicts an unforgettably sad story of social injustice, family love, personal sacrifice, and fateful tragedy.
Set in Heian era (11th century) Japan, it follows an aristocratic woman, Tamaki (played by Tanaka Kinuyo, who also stars in Mizoguchi's Ugetsu Monogatari), and her two children, Zushio (Hanayagi Yoshiaki) and Anju (Kagawa Kyoko), who are separated by feudal tyranny from Tamaki's husband. When the children are kidnapped and sold into slavery to the eponymous "Sansho" (Shindo Eitaro), the lives of each of the family members follow very different paths – each course uniquely, and insufferably, tragic.
Gion Bayashi is a drama set in the world of the courtesan, contrasting two different types of geisha – on one hand, Eiko (Wakao Ayako), a sixteen-year old orphan who wishes to be taken in and trained; on the other, Miyoharu (Kogure Michiyo), an older, more experienced geisha, who agrees to mentor the younger woman – living under the same roof in difficult personal circumstances. A fascinating, subtle insight into the lives of these women in 1950s Japan.
